Fog is the desire of the earth

Works by Chaim Sokol and Andrey Kuzkin at the Stella Art Foundation

Chaim Sokol and Andrey Kuzkin are generally recognized as the best artists of the 1st Moscow Youth Biennale of Contemporary Art “Stop! Who's coming?" (took place this summer). Both actively communicate with the tradition of conceptual art, in which the true meaning of what is seen is read in interpretation, in metalanguage. Both of them, with their creativity, support the mythology of the special romantic path of conceptual art, which was once developed by Boris Groys.

At the exhibition that just opened at the Stella Art Foundation (Mytnaya, 62), the artists performed as a duet, presenting the “Earth” project. Chaim Sokol exhibited a set of models. They make up the landscape of the earth, seen as if from an airplane window. The models are made of rusty sheet metal and enclosed in plastic boxes. These layouts evoke poignant emotions. After all, both the houses and the figures are fragile and unprotected. And the material of the models is appropriate: iron rusts, turning into dust, disappearing into the flesh of the earth.

Andrey Kuzkin offered video documentation of two of his performances. The first is called “Traces” and was held in 2006 in the village of Pustyn, Ivanovo province. Andrey covered part of the neighbor's yard with white cloth. Neighboring residents walked on the fabric. They left traces. Now the fabric that has absorbed the brown color of the traces left is an archaeological site. Beautiful textured readymade.

Another performance took place as part of the 1st youth biennale “Stop! Who's coming?" in the Veretyevo artillery camp. Tied with a rope to a pole, Andrei walked around the area with hardening concrete until the concrete thickened and his legs were able to move. I witnessed this action, merciless towards myself (the heat, horseflies, every step hurts more and more, and so on for four hours in a row). And, like others, he was delighted with the power of direct action, understood as direct speech, the meanings of which range from the archetypal (the artist with his mission of eternal resistance to the material) to the whimsical historical and cultural (a powerful plastic allusion to Van Gogh’s “Prisoners’ Walk”, barge haulers’ plots and the leaden coloring of the “soil” Russian paintings of the social-critical movement of the second half of the 19th century), flared up in all their complementary complexity. Truly a masterpiece.

In the good traditions of romantic Russian conceptualism, in the works of both artists the plastic is not completely annihilated by the linguistic. The visual and the verbal complement each other, opening up the rich resources of intellectual discussions that are the most important thing in conceptual art. The projects presented at Stella Art are absorbed through a veil of semiotic fog that requires special care in movement. Fog is very welcome by the body of the earth. “Fog is the desire of the earth. It hides the sun for which she yearns.” Rabindranath Tagore said so.

Sergei KHACHATUROV